Category: Jack Chick

Religious fundamentalist comics that alternate in quality between second-grade scrawlings and professional-grade gay erotica, with confusing morals that lack even internal logical consistency. If you see one in real life, flush it down the nearest toilet.

The thing possessed poor Maria. It drove her to do strange things. But Jesus’ power delivered her so the thing couldn’t hurt her anymore.

I want to read this as a euphemism, and considering how religious and superstitious folk have treated everything from mental disorders to menstruation over the course of human history, I probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark: “The thing” possessed poor Maria, and made her do strange things! (Psst — “the thing” is her menses! Oogabooga!)

Anyway, here’s another terrible Tract for you, hand-crafted by Jack Chick with all the talent, love and beauty of a cat throwing up half a dead mouse onto your bed. Enjoy!

“The Passover lamb saved the lives of the firstborn Jews in Egypt. Now Jesus is the Lamb who can save you!”

Ah, Exodus. One of the most famous books in the Old Testament, and my favorite for all the wrong reasons. This… this will be fun.

J: It’s my favorite for even wronger reasons. *breaks out the Kleenex and Vaseline* Let’s do this!

J: (Again, my stuff will be denoted as you see here, with the J:, and anything unmarked belongs to the guest Dissector. This one wasn’t a tag-team-style one like the last few — I just added my two cents afterward.)

Funny, campy, over-the-top. This Halloween tract by Jack Chick starts with a vampire story, but ends with a straight gospel message.

Storot:Yeah, “campy”…concentration campy.

nepphi: I don’t know, I think less ‘intense, soulless horror’ and more ‘awkward teenage years’ when I read this one, so maybe…bible campy?

Storot: I was just looking for a pun on the sheer awfulness of the tract. Or Jack’s Jewy arch-villains.

J: You know, isn’t Jack kind of disobeying his own moral guidelines, here, by telling a vampire story? If other forms of fantasy are all evil and will lead people to demonic possession, does it really matter if they tack a gospel message onto the end of it? By this logic, if D&D guidebooks included some random passage from Mark at the end of it, would Jack retract Dark Dungeons?

Storot: When reading the following tract, enhance your experience with an audio track. We at Consolidated Incorporated (our slogan “If you need it, talk to someone else. We can’t help you”) recommend “Fingernails on a Chalkboard”, “Cats In Heat”, or “Rosanne Barr’s Rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner'”. Anything to distract you from the pain before you.

Well we’re movin on up,
To the shoreside.
To a deluxe apartment on the sand.
Movin on up,
To the shoreside.
We’re finally gonna walk on the land.

Another one about evolution, this time really stretching every far-fetched, contrived argument well beyond any point of credibility. If I ever discover there was a single person in the world who was convinced by any of the ludicrous arguments put forth in this Tract, I… well… I’m not sure what I’ll do. I think I’ll spend the rest of my life crying.

He’s really outdone himself this time. This one… it’s… it’s just the worst.

The art isn’t terrible, but the message certainly is. This is going to be a ranty/lengthy Dissection, but hey — I haven’t done one in a while.

I’ve been meaning to revisit some of the earlier Dissections, since I did them long before I got much of a feel for them, and it seems like there are a few things missing from them. So in light of Gary Gygax’s recent demise, I figured we’d pay a kind of tribute by going back and taking a look at the subject of the very first Dissection: Dark Dungeons.

[nepphie] That’s us, honoring the creator of one of the greatest games ever by re-trashing a tract that completely misrepresents said game.

Since nepphie has done all the work of tagging all of his lines with [nepphie], we’re going to ditch the usual convention. My lines will be the unprefixed ones.

School children are taught that we don’t need God, because we are just animals who came from apes. But Susy tells her young friend that God made us, and sent his Son to give us eternal life. A children’s tract.

Wow, Jack, way to read way the fuck too much into the implications of evolution. I fail to see how evolution is in any way incompatible with the existence of God, or how our being mammalian somehow means we’re “just animals”. It’s kind of amazing that I, as a secular person, seem to be giving God far, far more credit than fundamentalist Christians seem to. I dunno, I think an omnipotent being would be fully capable of fashioning a creation that could change and advance and develop on its own without constant intervention.

“A children’s tract.” Hooray! Brainwash your kids in such a way that it’s effectively an information virus that prevents their minds from even processing any new information! Awesome! No need for knowledge, or the ability to analyze the observable world — all you need is faith! Fuck you, Jack. No, seriously. I’ve said it before, but I really mean it this time.

A young woman’s brush with death reveals Satan’s plot for her destruction.

We’re trying something a little different this week, using Google docs to simultaneously work on a Dissection for a more back and forth commentary. So, without any further delay than there has already been for this one, here’s…